August Garden Update
Well, I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while, but I haven’t gotten around to taking more pictures of the gardens.
Let’s start, though, with some other gardens in the area. As mentioned previously, we’ve had some pretty epic weather in the past week. This morning, we got the bad news from our CSA (Grant Family Farms).
In their words:
Last Thursday night at 4:30 in the afternoon our (yours) farm took a violent blow from the sky. Much of the farm was barraged by a 25 minute hail storm. The ground was white in some places and the drifts still present the next morning. In the following 2 days we received over 4 ½” of rain. As of August 1st we had only received 3.8″ all year. We were set to begin harvest this week on beautiful peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers……..as you will see in some pictures coming…….these plants were destroyed. The current lettuce, chards, kales, tomato, pepper, eggplant, edamame, melons and parsley fields were also all destroyed.
Every time we’ve signed up for a CSA, we’ve been made aware of the risks. You shell out $400 in April, and hope to receive a huge pile of food every week for 22 weeks. But there is no guarantee. The farm is organic, and anything can happen. This year has been good so far. A lot of lettuce. The squash and tomatoes and peppers seem to be late coming. And now, they seem to be not coming at all.
Not only did Liz loose her garden, but fully two-thirds of the huge Grant Family farm was destroyed in 25 minutes of blinding, pounding hail. I expect farms to falter in drought, or floods. But you never expect a half hour of bad weather to wipe out everything you’ve been working and hoping for all year.
We talked to some farmers at the Market on Saturday, who were all stony faced in the rain. “This is the last harvest we’ll have at market for the year,” one farmer told me. “Everything else is gone. At least my truck is ok.”
My gardens managed to escape much damage. The tomatoes (which are finally starting to turn red) are all protected by the eves of my house, but I’m starting to see some splitting after the huge amount of rain we got this weekend. We are still expecting a tomato harvest of epic proportions at the Calder house!
A bigger issue is the plague of grasshoppers.
I’d love to get a photo of these huge (4″ long!) hoppers soon, but they move fast and seem to be able to sense my approach. I can see them eating away happily from inside the house, but when I get out to the garden, they’ve all hopped off into the bushes.
So far, soapy water and bleach have not made a dent in their appetites. I’ve tried a Grasshopper Relocation Program where I capture the bugs and release them directly below my distant neighbor’s bird feeders. This doesn’t seem to stop them. I’m now catching them and drowning them in vodka. This seems to work quickly, but is not a preventative from more of them jumping out of the prairie in front of my house and attacking my plants.
So far, I’ve lost all of my bean plants and a good chunk of my orange tree to the ugly beasts. I’ve been doing research and haven’t found any good advise on how to manage the pests. Has anybody out there discovered a decent way to get rid of a swarm of grasshoppers?
I’m thinking about getting some garden snakes, but Mark really doesn’t like that idea.
isn’t there something about a lot of bugs in the bible somewhere? revelations i think.
the end of the world is nigh.
Um. Ok, I know I’m going to sound obnoxious, but I can’t seem to help myself. Yes, there is a plague of locusts in the Bible. It happens in the Old Testament, where God brings plagues down on Egypt to convince them to free the Jewish slaves. Moses and all of that. “Let my people go!” You know the story.
I don’t think there is a plague of locusts in Revelations. Pretty sure that one is mostly about seals being broken, the coming of the beast, rivers running with blood and the dead rising from their graves for final judgment. Depending on how you interpret those signs, we might be ok. Or we might not be. ;)
Hi Kate, I’m sorry your garden (and CSA) got bashed like that. Don’t know anything to do about grasshoppers either :-( I’ve had more problems with slugs. Lots and lots of slugs. My harvest of peas was a measly handful. We’ve had a wet summer as well, although you’ve probably had the same amount of rain in a couple of days as we’ve had over the past few weeks. Just got myself a new pair of rubber boots! Sometimes I do miss Colorado… always nice to read your blog and see what’s going on :-)
Look at the CSU Extension service note on grasshopper control for small gardens. Organic solutions are difficult to implement, and require cooperation of your neighborhood Kestrals and/or coyotes. A simpler, maybe more enjoyable approach is to put up a caged bird feeder filled with black oil sunflower seeds. Grackles love these things, but the cage will keep them from gorging on the seeds (and scaring away other birds you might enjoy watching) and seek other food sources. Grackles travel in large family groups, and I have observed them cooperatively hunting grasshoppers in our garden, much like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park. Good luck!
Maike–as for slugs, the best solution is to submerge a shallow plastic container into the soil so it’s lip is flush with the soil. Pour some beer into the dish at night, and in the morning, you’ll have captured many slugs.
Hi Maike and Charlotte! Thanks for the ideas. A bird feeder does sound simpler than the last plan I had. It involved a type of electricified netting covering the whole garden. Or maybe just tasering the little jerks.
You know, at the beginning of the summer, I was trying to be so humane. I just didn’t want to kill anything in my garden. Gardens are for growing, right? Boy, that whole attitude went bye-bye with the beans, I think. Now I don’t consider grasshoppers living creatures any more. I’m looking for efficient methods of killing that won’t hurt me or my produce!! Birds… birds are good ideas. Better than snakes.